Achieving the Impossible

The Life & DREAMS OF SHELBY JACOBS

Meet Shelby, a mechanical engineer from the Apollo era! As Project Manager of the Apollo-Soyuz orbiter, Shelby designed instrumentation that would capture one of the most repeated images in space history: the separation between the first and second stages of the Apollo 6 spacecraft in 1968.

Shelby Jacobs’s contribution to space exploration is a truly remarkable feat. The Space Center is honored to display Shelby’s life achievements revolving around his work and personal life as an African American aerospace engineer working in the 1960s.